Document authoring projects may require multiple authors each working from separate computing stations. One author may prepare a first portion of the document and another author may prepare another portion of the document. The portions are then spliced together by an editor to form a single document. This type of collaborative authoring may include each of the authors checking-out a document to add content and checking-in a document when changes are complete. The checking-out and checking-in process may cause conflicts, restrict document availability for the authors, and cause document status confusion.
In other situations, drafts of documents are circulated by email and cause excessive versioning. Commenting format does not exist in emails, so an author may include comments in the email, add comments to an attached document, comment through highlighting, or simply make changes without identifying what has been changed. Such emailing of drafts causes excessive circulation, tracking issues, lost drafts, mismanagement, and loss of productivity.